I realised "next gen" consoles were well behind on the tech...

yeah dude, that's because they are consoles. They are meant to be affordable, which is why the tech is behind

But I prefer console gaming by a long shot! But I do have a gaming PC

I just think consoles have a better variety in games and I prefer an actual controller to keyboard and mouse. I know you can connect xbox controllers to PC, but native control you know

The point is that they are behind, and even for the price point. So that card used is UC's by about 40% and beats the xbone. You can get an equivalent (in terms of compute performance, with is kinda cheating), but far more power efficient card now for £99.99, and it's not too hard to throw together the rest of the system for £250, especially if you have old partly lying around and/or use Linux. From a price efficiency perspective people like to forget that new gen games are £10 over the previous gen as opposed to £10 or more below previous gen on pc.

At the time of production the consoles weren't actually behind when taking price point into account. The best PC that could have been built at the time for slightly more than XboxONE money was one which sported an i5-4430 coupled with a GTX 660 - marginally more powerful than the XboxONE, however, weaker than the cheaper PS4. This isn't taking optimisation into account as, in the long run, even the XboxONE would eventually become more effective.

Well my laptop is pretty much scuppered so I need to replace it anyway, so may as well go all out and replace it with something badass. Although chances are I'll end up getting one of the consoles too.

Consoles are going to be obsolete well soon.

And by the time that happens you're probably looking at the 800 series equivalent being out so it's dropped back again. There were console matching PCs on launch and only a few months later definitively beating, not to mention that if you're building a PC to compete with consoles you don't go for the same price point, you go a bit higher since that price difference is rapidly offset by paying less for games and, in the case of xbone, not paying for live. Then, ofc, you save a load else by not having to also have a computer on the side for general use.

Do people seriously still try using that line?

The point is that they are behind, and even for the price point. So that card used is UC's by about 40% and beats the xbone. You can get an equivalent (in terms of compute performance, with is kinda cheating), but far more power efficient card now for £99.99, and it's not too hard to throw together the rest of the system for £250, especially if you have old partly lying around and/or use Linux. From a price efficiency perspective people like to forget that new gen games are £10 over the previous gen as opposed to £10 or more below previous gen on pc.

Yes, yes they do. When I buy a console, I want it for gaming, not some "all-in-one" bs.

So, you does that mean that you don't have a smart phone, after all, increasing functionality is clearly bad and mobile phones are for making calls, not going on the internet.

So, you does that mean that you don't have a smart phone, after all, increasing functionality is clearly bad and mobile phones are for making calls, not going on the internet.

I do have a smartphone, but that's because I WANT the ability to go on the internet when I am not at home. I would rather buy a PS4 over an Xbox One, as it is more powerful...

Enter: cloud computing

Which is becoming more marginal by the day, the difference is £5 on amazon, and 35 if you get the kinect with it. I would rather spend that extra £35 to get a platform with poor performance and plenty of extra stuff on the side over something with poor performance and nothing of note on the side.

Better support for indies, better exclusive games.

I do agree with your cloud computing point. Having already sold an Xbox One and desiring a Wii U and a PS4, I can see myself getting an XBone again one day when they're using that cloud computing in some interesting ways (assuming there are games worth playing).

Poor comparison really, smartphones can be used for on-the-move information like GPS and maps, train times, theatre shows, cinemas, restaurants and so on. Since the basic mobile phone utilities cannot be improved there's nothing wrong with a smartphone, because the added features don't detract from the core principles.

However the xbone's obsession with non-gaming features actively detracted from R&D that could have been poured into getting a better gaming system without affecting the price point, since the gaming aspect can still be improved upon. This is one of the reasons the PS4 surpassed the xbone at launch, because it was purer and so offered better gaming-orientated specs for less money, because they weren't charging for excess flab

The exclusives are pretty subjective, as for indies, the impression that I got from E3 is that both are working hard on getting lots of indie titles out. Also, neither of them are external to gaming, how much additional functionality does the PS4 offer than xbone doesn't?


Too many people are assuming that day one performance differences=performance difference at death. Better optimisation will almost certainly close the gap, and cloud will make sure the gap is gone, with the possibility of superseding PS4, but the console market seems to forget that tech isn't static like their console hardware.

The key difference between them though is that M$ were trying to move forwards with thier platform whereas sony, clearly, went for the concept of "well, it worked the last three times, let's pump out another platform that has next to no extended functionality". Correct me if I'm wrong, but are the innards of the two not almost identical? A few more GPU cores (can't think of the correct term off the top of my head) on the PS4 and a different RAM configuration in the one but for all intents and purposes they're the same. But, those extra cores on the PS4 mean that, before being properly optimised, a difference which could vanish with proper optimisation. Cloud computing should close the gap or overtake PS4. And I would say a bigger reason for initial success of PS4 is down to a poor announcement for Xbone and people being seemingly thinking that what is said at announcement is set in stone. How many people were still saying that PS4 is better because of all the DRM and sharing with friends stuff after it was changed? I wonder, how many people still think you have to have Kinect plugged in?

Xbox have a pretty horrible clause for indie devs which put a lot of them off developing for it. See here.

Optimisation will be interesting with this generation I think. Because of the similarity of architecture between PC and console, I'd expect devs to be able to utilise most of the performance out of the box. I don't think we'll see as much a difference using base console performance this gen as we did last gen, say by comparing the graphics to CoD2 and MW3.

That being said, the cloud computing could totally throw it in favour of the Xbox. That to me is the most exciting part of the One.

RE: Added functionality... I only used the "Xbox Record That" command on the XBOne and the YouTube app. Half of that can be done by the PS4 and the other half wasn't really that great so... err? I dunno, I'm not good for this part of the argument. I used the consoles for games. The Xbox 360 however was my Sky Go player!

How many people were still saying that PS4 is better because of all the DRM and sharing with friends stuff after it was changed? I wonder, how many people still think you have to have Kinect plugged in?